book excerpt: dreamland by robert l. anderson

8/20/2019 Book Excerpt: Dreamland by Robert L. Anderson

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Geographical disclaimer:

Fielding and its environs, including Marborough, Pellston, and, farther

afield, Wapachee Falls, and DeWitt, are entirely my own creation.

I imagined Fielding to be some miles outside of Bloomington, Indiana,

which is, of course, a real place. I’ve found it useful to drop imagined

towns into a very real landscape and then pass between them, much

in the same way that Dea passes in and out of our known reality,

but I apologize for any confusion that may arise as a result.

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Dreamland

Copyright © 2015 by Robert L. Anderson

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoeverwithout written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied

in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New

York, NY 10007.

www.epicreads.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, Robert Luis.

Dreamland / Robert Luis Anderson. — First edition.

pages cm

Summary: “Odea Donahue has been able to travel through people’s dreams

since she was six years old, but when Dea breaks the rules, dreams start to

become reality”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-233867-9 (hardback)

[1. Dreams—Fiction. 2. Fantasy.] I. Title.

PZ7.1.A53Dr 2015 2014047863

[Fic]—dc23 CIP

AC

15 16 17 18 19 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

❖

First Edition


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To Stephen Barbara,

for your ultimate bad-assery and your belief in this book.


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Afterward, Dea blamed it all on Toby. She knew it wasn’t nice

to blame a cat. It was definitely immature. But that was life:

one big chain reaction, a series of sparks and explosions. Always, explosions.

If Toby hadn’t clawed through the screen door, she would

never have met so-and-so, she would never have said such-

and-such, she would never have done blah, blah, blah. She’d

still be slogging through dumb algebra homework in Fielding,

Indiana, getting picked last in gym class and ignored in thecafeteria.

Funny how Fielding, Indiana, didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Or maybe it just didn’t seem important. Not after the cops

and the disappearance. Not after the men with no faces and

the city in the sand.

Not after the monsters started showing up in the mirror.

Definitely not after Connor.


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“Freaks.” An empty can of Coke ricocheted off Odea’s backpack

and landed in the dirt. Inside the car, several girls laughed, a

sound like the distant twittering of birds. Then Tucker Wallace’s

truck continued grinding and bumping down Route 9, kicking

up dust and exhaust.

“Thank you!” Gollum shouted. She scooped up the can and

dribbled a few drops of soda in the dirt. “Thoughtful,” she said

to Dea. “Too bad they forgot to leave us anything to drink.”

“I’m sure it was just an oversight,” Dea said.

“You know, for an evil hell spawn, Hailey’s got pretty goodaim. Maybe she should try out for the basketball team.”


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Dea laughed, imagining Hailey Madison, whose sole form of

exercise came, according to rumors, from showing off various

parts of her anatomy to different horny senior boys beneath thebleachers, running up and down a basketball court. She liked

that about Gollum, arguably the only person in Fielding more

unpopular than Dea was. She couldn’t be fazed. She turned

everything into a joke.

Gollum always said it was because she’d grown up on a

working dairy farm, dirt poor, with five brothers. After you’ve shoveled shit at five in the morning in December, she always said, you

learn how to keep things in perspective.

They kept walking. It was hot for September. The fields were

full of withered corn and sun-bleached grass and the occasional

spray of white wildflowers, floating like foam on the surface of a

golden ocean. The sky was pale, practically white, like someone

had forgotten to vacuum the dust out of the blue.

Even by Fielding standards, the Donahues’ house was in

the middle of nowhere. There were only four properties within

shouting distance: a house that belonged to an ancient alcoholic

Dea had never seen; Daniel Robbins’s house, which was bor-

dered on all sides by a chicken wire fence and bore a dozen No

Trespassing signs; the Warrenby Dairy Farm, which sprawled

over three hundred acres (“all of them useless,” Gollum liked to

say); and a large brick colonial almost directly across the street

that had been vacant since Odea and her mother had moved in.

But today, as Odea and Gollum got closer, Dea saw the

yard of the colonial house was littered with cardboard boxes

and furniture sheathed in plastic. There was a big U-Haul truckparked in the driveway. A woman was standing on the front


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porch, sorting through cartons as though looking for something

specific. She straightened up, smiling, when she spotted Dea.

She was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved white T-shirt and shehad blond hair tied neatly in a ponytail. She was just the right

amount of fat for a mom.

Dea felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

Before the woman could say anything, a man’s voice called

to her from inside and she turned and entered the house. Dea

was relieved. She would have had nothing to say by way of greet-ing. Welcome to Fielding, pimple of Indiana. Watch out for roadkill.

“Think they got lost?” Gollum asked, adjusting her glasses.

Everything Gollum owned was a hand-me-down or picked from

the Salvation Army, and was either a little too big, too small, or

just slightly out of fashion. Gollum, real name Eleanor Warrenby,

had earned her nickname in third grade, when she’d made the

mistake of wearing her older brother’s Lord of the Rings T-shirt to

school too many days in a row. When she’d first explained this

to Dea, Dea had been stupid enough to ask why she hadn’t just

worn a different shirt. Gollum had looked at her like she was

insane, squinting from behind her too-big glasses.

“Didn’t have any,” she’d said matter-of-factly, and Dea had

been ashamed.

“Think we should tell them to run?” Dea said, and now it

was Gollum who laughed, a honking laugh that belonged to a

person way bigger than she was.

They’d reached Dea’s gate, which was crowded with climb-

ing leaf and honeysuckle, so much of it the small bronze plaque

nailed to the wood was almost completely concealed: HISTORI-CAL LANDMARK SOCIETY, BUILT 1885, RESTORED 1990.


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“If you’re bored this weekend . . .” Gollum trailed off, like

she always did, leaving the invitation unspoken: I’m right down

the road. Gollum and Dea had been walking to and from the busstop together since January, when Dea had moved to Fielding

in the middle of sophomore year. They sat next to each other in

class and ate together at lunch. But they’d never once hung out

after school, and Dea hadn’t seen Gollum at all except in passing

over the summer.

Dea’s fault. Dea’s problem. And she could never, ever explain why.

“Bored? In Fielding?” Dea pretended to be shocked. “Never.”

She didn’t want to have to make up an excuse, and Gollum never

pushed her for one, which was one of the things she liked best

about Gollum.

The Donahues’ house was the exact replica of a farm that

had existed there over a hundred years ago. It was restored to

look completely original—silo and all—even though not a splin-

ter of the original house remained. For two decades, the house

was a museum, but by the time Dea and her mom rented it, the

place had been shuttered for a few years. Dea figured no one

wanted to walk through a past that looked exactly like the pres-

ent, and vice versa.

A simulacrum: that’s what it was called when something was

made to resemble something else. Dea’s mother had taught her

the word. Her mother loved simulacra of any kind: plastic sushi

designed to look like the real thing, kettles concealed within

the plaster model of a roosting chicken, clock faces that were

actually cabinets. As usual, her mom had locked all three locks on the front


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door, and as usual, Dea had a bitch of a time getting the keys

to work. In Cleveland, in Chicago, even in Florida, Dea could

understand her mom’s obsession with locks and barriers, escapeplans and worst-case-scenario talks. But here, in Fielding, where

the biggest crime was cattle tipping, it made less sense.

Then again, her mom had never made any sense. Dea occa-

sionally imagined that scientists would come knocking on the

door and drag them both to a lab for experimentation. They’d

isolate the gene for crazy—an inherited twist in the doublehelix, an unexpected sickle shape.

The hall was cool and dark, and smelled like rosemary.

Other than the tick-tick-tick of a dozen old clocks, it was quiet.

Dea’s mom was a nut about clocks. They were the only things

she insisted on keeping, the only possessions she bothered to

take with them when they moved. Sometimes Dea felt like that

crocodile in Peter Pan, like a ticking clock was lodged in her belly

and she couldn’t escape it. Every so often, her heart picked up

on the rhythm.

Dea didn’t bother calling out for her mom. She was usu-

ally gone during the day, although Dea was no longer sure

what, exactly, she did. There’d been so many jobs triumphantly

attained, then quietly lost. A quick celebration— I’m a reception-

ist now!—a rare glass of champagne, a spin through the local

mall to buy shoes and clothes that looked the part. Sometimes

Dea thought that’s why her mom got jobs in the first place: so

she could dress up, pretend to be someone else.

Inevitably, after a week or two, the sensible, flat-soled shoes

were returned to the closet; the car would remain in the drive-way well past nine a.m.; and Dea would find a laminated ID card


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bearing a picture of her mom’s smiling face under the words

Sun Security Systems or Thompson & Ives, Attorneys-at-Law dis-

carded in the trash, under a thin film of rotting lettuce. Thenthe weeks of scrimping began: microwavable meals purchased

from the gas station, sudden relocations to avoid overdue rent,

pit stops in cheap motels mostly populated by drug addicts. Dea

was never sure what her mom did to get fired. She suspected

that her mom simply got bored and stopped showing up.

In the kitchen, Dea excavated some pickles from the backof the fridge, behind a bottle of crusty ketchup and a chunk of

moldy cheddar cheese, and took the jar out to the back porch,

her favorite part of the house. She loved its broad, white rail-

ing set on a curve, like the swollen prow of a ship, its sagging

rattan furniture, and beat-up iron tables. She settled down on

the porch swing, relishing in the Friday feeling: two whole days

without school. She liked to think of the weekend as a geomet-

ric shape, as a long wave. Now, she was just riding up toward the

first swell, at the very farthest point from the dumpy shoreline

of school.

Sometimes, when she was sitting on the porch, she liked

to imagine another Odea, an alternate-girl who lived on an

alternate-farm, maybe back in time when it really was a farm.

She imagined her sitting on the porch swing, using one leg for

momentum, as Odea did. She enjoyed imagining all the differ-

ent people and lives that had been played out in the same space,

all of them packed together and on top of each other like Sty-

rofoam peanuts in a carton, and at the same time preserved in

their separate realities.She wondered whether alternate-Odea liked pickles, too.


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She was startled by a sudden rush of wings. A black bird

landed on the railing, hopped a few inches, and cocked its head

to look at her. It had a big red splash across its belly, as thoughit had recently been plucked out of a paint can.

“Hey.” Odea wrestled a pickle out of the jar. She had no idea

whether birds liked pickles but decided to give it a shot. “Want

one?”

The bird hopped away another few inches. Its eyes were like

two dark stones.She liked birds. Birds were harbingers—another word she’d

learned from her mom. The dictionary defined harbinger as a

person who goes ahead and makes known the approach of another;

herald. Also an omen; anything that foreshadows a future event.

In dreams, birds were very important. Dea often depended

on them to show her the way back out of the dreams she walked.

Dreams were confusing and ever changing; sometimes she

turned and found the passage she had come through blocked by

a new wall or a sudden change in the landscape. But birds knew

the way out. She just had to follow them.

“Hungry?” she tried again, leaning forward, reaching a little

closer.

Suddenly, a dark blur of fur rocketed past her. The bird star-

tled, let out a scream, and went f lapping into the air just as Toby

made a clumsy lunge for it. Toby thudded down the stairs, belly

thumping, and plunged into the garden, as if hoping that the

bird might change its mind and fly directly into his mouth.

“Toby!” She stood up quickly but Toby had already disap-

peared into the garden. She followed him, swatting aside heavybranches dripping with flowers, clusters of chrysanthemums,


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fat bunches of zinnias that crowded the walkway. Her mother’s

garden always reminded her of dreams: the colors slightly too

vivid to be real, the perfume so strong it was like a lullaby, whis-pering for her to sleep, sleep.

She spotted Toby slinking under the low, rotted picket fence

that divided her property from the road. It had been too long

since she’d walked a dream—a week, maybe longer—and she

was getting weak. She was sweating already, and her heart was

beating painfully in her chest, even though she wasn’t movingvery fast.

Toby took off again as soon as she was close enough to grab

him, and it took another ten minutes before Dea could corner

him at the edge of Burnett Pond, which was technically the bor-

der of Gollum’s family’s property, although Gollum always said

her family used only a quarter of their land.

“Got you, asshole,” she said, and snatched Toby up. He was

heavy, like a fat, warm rug. “Good thing you’re cute,” she said.

“Otherwise I’d chuck you in the pond.” He licked her chin.

She stood for a moment, trying to catch her breath, careful

not to stand too close to the water. They were sheltered from the

sun by a heavy growth of pine and sycamore trees, a rare break

from the wide fields, burnt and withered, stretching all the way

from horizon to horizon. The pond was covered with deep pur-

ple and green shadows.

She was about to turn back when she noticed a pair of red

shorts—a guy’s—and some flip-flops carefully laid out on the

bank. She scanned the water and saw a ripple at the far side of

the pond, and a dark shape she had originally mistaken for ananimal. An arm pinwheeled out of the water. Then another.

She was temporarily mesmerized, as she always was when


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she saw someone swimming. Slowly, the boy carved his way

through the water, creating a small wake. Then, abruptly, before

she could turn away, he surfaced.He had a nice face—good-looking without being too

good-looking. The water had turned his hair into spikes, and his

nose was crooked, like maybe it had been broken. His chin was

pronounced, probably a tiny bit big, and it gave his whole face a

stubborn expression.

“This is awkward,” was the first thing he said.“Sorry,” she said quickly, realizing she probably looked like

a weird stalker or a pervert. “My cat . . . I wasn’t watching you.”

“No, no.” He made a face. “I meant . . . well, my clothes.”

Then it hit her: he was swimming naked. He was naked,

right then. Which meant she was having a conversation with a

naked boy.

“I was just leaving,” she said.

“Wait! Just wait one minute. Just . . . turn around and close

your eyes, okay?”

She heard sloshy water sounds, and then the rustle of fabric.

She tried to think of something other than the fact that a boy

was pulling on clothes less than three feet away from her: a large

hall of statues, cool, full of echoes. An image she had seen once

in a dream.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said.

She did, and was surprised to see that he was taller and skin-

nier than he looked in the water—probably at least six foot two.

He had a swimmer’s build: long arms, broad shoulders, skinny

waist.“I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of nudist,” he said.

“I didn’t know anyone came down this way.”


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“No one does, except for this guy.” She hefted Toby in her

arms, glad her hands were full and she didn’t have to figure out

what to do with them. “He got out.”He reached out and scratched Toby on the chin. Toby

stretched his head to the sky. As he purred, his body vibrated

in her arms.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“Toby,” she said.

He kept his eyes on Toby. “And what about your name?”She hesitated. “Odea,” she said. “People call me Dea.” This

wasn’t exactly true, since most people didn’t speak to her or

address her at all. But her mom called her Dea, and so did Gol-

lum.

“Connor,” he said. There was an awkward pause, and then

they both spoke simultaneously.

“So, you live around here?” he said.

Just as she said: “You new?”

He laughed. He had a nice laugh. Nice teeth, too. “You first.”

“Yeah. The farmhouse,” she said, jerking her chin to indicate

the direction from which she’d come.

He smiled. Suddenly, his whole face was transformed. The

slightly-too-big chin, the crooked nose, and eyes maybe spaced a

centimeter too far apart—all of it became perfect, symmetrical.

Beautiful. She looked away, suddenly embarrassed.

“We’re neighbors,” he said. “We just moved in across the

street.”

“I figured,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, and she clari-

fied. “Everyone knows everyone around here. I figured you werethe new kid. I saw the moving truck.”


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“Busted,” he said. “You go to Fielding? I’m a transfer.” When

she nodded, he said, “Maybe you know my cousin. Will Briggs?”

Even thinking the name brought a foul taste to her mouth,like rotten gym socks and watery beer. Will Briggs was huge and

dumb and mean; rumor was that his dad, who worked for the

police department, had once cracked him over the head with a

guitar, and he’d been screwed up ever since. Nobody liked Will

Briggs, but he was good at football and his dad was a cop, which

meant that no one messed with him either. Apparently he was the one who’d started calling Gollum Gol-

lum in third grade, probably the only vaguely creative thing he’d

ever done.

“No,” she lied. In Dea’s opinion, Will Briggs was radioactive

material: anyone associated with him was contaminated.

He was still smiling. “I thought everyone knew everybody

around here.”

“Guess not.” She squeezed Toby tightly, burying her nose in

the soft scruff of his fur. Connor would get to school on Monday

and hear from his cousin that she was Odor Donahue, friendless

freak; then her new neighbor would turn suddenly unfriendly,

and make excuses to avoid looking at her when they passed in

the hall.

It had happened to her like that in Illinois. The summer

before freshman year, she’d spent two months hanging out with

a girl, Rhoda, who’d lived down the block. They’d spent hours

looking over Rhoda’s sister’s yearbook and giggling over cute

upperclassmen. They’d shopped for their first-day-of-school

outfits together. And then, as always, the rumors had spread:about Dea’s house, and the clocks; about how she and her mom


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were crazy. On the third day of school, Rhoda wouldn’t sit next

to her at lunch. After that, she would make the sign of the cross

when she saw Dea in the halls, like Dea was a vampire.In fact, Gollum was the only semi-friend Dea had had in

years. And that was only because Gollum was weird. Good-

weird, in Dea’s opinion, but definitely weird. Besides, Gollum

couldn’t really be counted as a friend, since she knew hardly

anything about who Dea really was—if she had, Dea was pretty

sure even Gollum would go running.“I should get back,” she said, not looking at him.

“See you Monday,” he called after her.

She didn’t bother responding. There was no point. She

already knew how this whole thing would go.


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Dea was six years old the first time she ever walked a dream.

It was an accident.

They’d been living on the outskirts of Disney World then, in

a large condo meant to look like a castle, with turrets on the roof

and f lags hanging above the doorway. Inside, however, it looked

nothing like a castle. The carpeting was green and smelled like

cat pee, and the elevators were always out of order.

There was a central courtyard, basically a paved deck with a

pool in the shape of a kidney bean, surrounded by sagging lawn

chairs and straggly plants overspilling their planters. There wasa tetherball pole, and a small outdoor pool house that held a


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bunch of moldy umbrellas, an old bocce ball set, and a foosball

table whose handles had been palmed smooth.

Dea was sick a lot back then. She had an irregular heart-beat. Sometimes she couldn’t feel it at all, and she’d find herself

gasping for breath. Other times, it raced so hard, she thought

it might fly out of her mouth. It was as though her heart were

tuned to the rhythm of a song she couldn’t hear.

Her mom had forbidden her to swim—she wanted Dea to

stay away from the pool entirely—and Dea was too weak to playtetherball. But she killed at foosball. When her mom was away

at work, she spent hours playing both sides of the table, watch-

ing the ball spin between the plastic players.

There was a girl, Mira, who lived in 7C. Like Dea, she was

too sick to go to school. She had bad asthma and legs that were

kind of collapsed, so she walked really slowly, knees crooked

inward, dragging her feet. She was one of Dea’s first friends.

Dea and Mira made up elaborate stories about the other resi-

dents of the condo, invented a new language called Inside Out,

and buried treasure in the potted plants so that aliens would

someday find it.

The day it happened, they’d spent the morning pretending to

be scientists, inventing names for every flower they could think

of, drawing them carefully with crayons in a big book of heavy-

duty artist’s paper Mira’s dad had bought her, of which Dea was

insanely jealous. She was jealous, actually, of everything Mira’s

father did, even stupid things, like coming down to the court-

yard and telling Mira when it was time to come up for dinner,

standing with one hand on the door, looking impatient.She was jealous that Mira had a dad at all.

It was hot. Even the pool was too hot to give much relief, not


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that Dea would have swum or even known how. Instead, Mira

had the idea to drag a lawn chair into the pool house, next to

the foosball table, where there was a fan. At some point, theyfell asleep, lying next to each other in their shorts and T-shirts,

their feet just touching.

And Dea found herself walking down a narrow stone cor-

ridor, open to the air on both sides and half collapsed, as in a

castle gone to ruin. As she moved forward, the stone shifted and

re-formed into individual doorways.Later, she learned from her mom that this wasn’t uncom-

mon. The dreamer, sensing an intrusion, builds walls, buildings,

sometimes whole cities, to prevent the strange element, the

walker, from getting in—kind of like the body releases white

blood cells to the site of an infection.

But Mira’s mind wasn’t very practiced, and so Dea passed

easily through one of the doorways and ended up in the open,

standing on a vivid stretch of green grass. Walking someone

else’s dream was like moving through a stranger’s house. Every-

thing was unfamiliar, and Dea knew instinctively not to disturb

or touch anything.

On a tennis court several hundred feet away, Mira was play-

ing. She was running back and forth on legs that were both

strong and straight, and each time her racquet connected with

the ball, there was a satisfying thwack. Then, midair, each ball

turned into a bird and soared away. Soon there were dozens of

birds, circling overhead, as though waiting for something.

Even at six, Dea knew that she was trespassing on some-

thing very private. All at once the birds converged and became an enormous

kite, so large it blotted out the sky. Then the court was swallowed


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in shadow and she knew it was time to wake up.

Outside the little pool house, it was raining. And for the first

time in Dea’s life, her heart was beating normally.

Her mom knew what she’d done. At the time, Dea didn’t think

that was strange. She was Mom. She knew everything. She knew

how to make the perfect chicken soup by adding cream and

tomato to a can of Campbell’s. She knew how to catch a single

raindrop on her tongue. She knew mirrors and open water werebad, and clocks were good.

That day, Miriam sat at the kitchen table, gripping a mug of

tea so tightly Dea could see individual veins in her hand, and

explained the rules of walking.

The first rule, which Dea had already intuited, was that she

must never try to change anything or intervene in another per-

son’s dream.

The second rule, related to the first, was that she might walk

as many dreams as she wished if she was careful, and followed

all the rules, but she must never walk the same person’s dreams

more than once.

And the third rule was that she must never, ever be seen.

Her mother explained other things, too—that birds were

harbingers and would serve as guides, that mirrors and water

were places where the boundary between the worlds was the

thinnest, that clocks would keep them safe from the other

side—but Dea had barely listened, so disappointed was she by

the list of rules, especially the fact that she was forbidden from

entering Mira’s dreams again.“Why can’t I go back?” Dea had asked.


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Dea’s mom reached out and took Dea’s chin. “I won’t let

them find you,” she said. Her eyes were very wide; she was look-

ing at Dea as if trying to beam a secret message to her, and Deaknew her mom was afraid.

Then Dea was afraid. “Who?” she asked, although she felt

she already knew the answer.

“The monsters,” Miriam said simply.


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At six o’clock and every six hours afterward, even on Saturday,

the clocks started. First a half dozen, then a few more, then

a handful more. Dea and her mom had more than two dozen

clocks, at last count, many of them fitted with chimes and bells,

gongs and whistles. Miriam liked them, said they comforted

her. She liked how they pulled her into morning with a song of

gears and mechanics.

Dea was used to them. The clocks had come with them to all

the houses they’d lived in. Often, Dea managed to sleep through

them. Today she was jerked awake and, for one confused second,couldn’t remember where she was, which house, in which town,


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in which part of the country. As soon as the last clock stopped

chattering, she rolled over, pulled the sheet over her head, and

went back to sleep: deep and dreamless, like always. Like howshe imagined it would be to swim, to sink into dark water.

When she woke up again, sun was streaming through the

paper blinds. It was after eleven a.m. She could hear her mom

padding around the kitchen downstairs. She loved that about

this house: the space, the sense of separation. She hated Fielding,

and missed living in cities like Chicago and even Houston—butthere they’d lived on top of each other, sometimes sharing a

single bedroom.

She pulled on clothes without paying attention to what she

was wearing, then moved to the closet and extracted a small

mirror from behind the jumble of sneakers and boots and flip-

flops worn down to paper. Her mom allowed absolutely no

mirrors in the house. Whenever they moved, the first thing

Miriam did was dismantle the bathroom cabinets. Dea had a

growing collection of forbidden mirrors, all purchased from yard

sales: tarnished silver handhelds, makeup compacts obscured

with a thick coat of ancient powder. Sometime in the spring

she’d told Gollum in passing that she collected mirrors, and for

Dea’s birthday Gollum had presented her with a pretty chrome

handheld, obviously antique, so heavy it hurt Dea’s bicep to lift

it. Dea had nearly cried, especially since she knew Gollum’s fam-

ily had hardly any money.

“Don’t worry,” Gollum had said, in that ridiculous way she

had of being able to read Dea’s mind. “I stole it.”

She was kidding, obviously. Dea was embarrassed andhumbled by Gollum’s generosity, especially since for Gollum’s


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birthday Dea had just gotten her a leopard-print Snuggie (to be

fair, Gollum was obsessed with Snuggies, or at least the idea of

them). The chrome mirror, along with the picture of her fatherdisplayed in the living room, was one of the few physical posses-

sions she actually cared about.

She checked her reflection. Hair: enormous. Skin: clear. Her

one good feature. Eyes: pale blue, the color of ice. She made a

monster face, then put away the mirror.

“Feeling better?” her mother said, as soon as she camedownstairs. As usual, Miriam could tell that Dea had walked.

“A little.” Dea nudged Toby out of the way and moved toward

the coffeepot.

A week earlier she’d pocketed a cheap plastic hair clip Shawna

McGregor had left on a bench after gym. She knew it would be

difficult to use—the best doorway objects were the ones that

were cherished and closely guarded, like jewelry or wallets. Her

mom speculated that it had something to do with the way that

the mind transforms the objects we love best into extensions of

the body. Touching someone’s favorite necklace was nearly as

good as holding hands—and made it so much easier to get in.

The night before, she’d had to grip the hair clip for nearly an

hour before she could push her way into Shawna’s dream.

She’d been in and out relatively quickly, before the dream

had time to change. It was a dream of a standard basement

party, the kind of gathering that Dea had never experienced in

real life—lots of sweat and bodies packed close and plastic cups,

as boring as she’d always imagined parties like that would be,

filled not just with the standard assortment of high school kidsbut also with strangers, including a boy who looked like he’d


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stepped out of a fairy tale. Maybe he had. Maybe he was Shaw-

na’s Prince Charming.

Hanging back behind one of the walls of the overstruc-ture—a decaying castle hung with moth-eaten tapestries and

pictureless frames—Dea had watched him, drawn to him with-

out exactly knowing why. His hair was a dark tangle and fell to

his jaw. He was tan, as if he’d spent a long time in the sun, and

wearing strange clothes and an old-fashioned belt fitted with

a knife. And while everyone else was dancing to an inaudiblecurrent of music, he was perfectly still—observing, just like Dea

was, as if somehow the rules of Shawna’s imagination didn’t

apply to him.

Then, suddenly, he started to turn toward her. Dea had

ducked quickly away.

Dea’s mom came over and gave her a squeeze. Even through

layers of clothing, Dea could feel how thin her mom was.

“What about you?” Dea said.

“I’m fine.” Miriam pulled away and reached for the coffee-

pot.

“You look tired.” Miriam looked worse than tired, but Dea

didn’t want to say so. Her skin was so pale, Dea could see indi-

vidual veins running through her wrists and neck. Her eyes—big

and beautiful, the color of storm clouds—looked huge in the

narrow hollow of her face.

Dea’s mother walked dreams too. Dea had known that

since she had known what walking dreams was, but Miriam

hardly spoke of it except in generalities. Dea had asked her once

whether her grandparents had walked too, thinking it might besome genetic aberration. But Miriam just said no and Dea didn’t


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press it. That was another thing they hardly ever spoke about:

family, or why they didn’t have any, and where they’d all gone.

The single picture of her father, positioned prominently ontop of the living room mantel, was a snapshot from probably

twenty years earlier, when he was young and wearing a cheesy

red polo shirt and laughing, petting a dog. She didn’t know

if it was his dog or her mom’s, or when the photo was taken,

or where. In some ways she didn’t like to ask, because then it

would ruin her ability to imagine. And she did imagine. A lot. That he’d been a firefighter

who’d perished heroically during 9/11. That he worked for the

CIA and had been captured during a dangerous mission, but

would someday reappear, having escaped from prison using only

a pair of tweezers. That he’d been framed for a crime he didn’t

commit and would remain hidden until he could clear his name.

Anything but the suspicion that crept up on her sometimes,

surprised her when she wasn’t paying attention: that he’d simply

gotten tired of them, and walked out.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dea asked. She knew that her

mom went as long as she could between walks, until she was so

sick she could barely stand.

“I’m positive. Let me do the worrying, Dea.” Her mom

finished pouring the coffee, and added exactly three seconds’

worth of milk. “Coffee?”

“In a minute.” She sat down at the table and reached absent-

mindedly for the newspaper, which trumpeted headlines about

record heat and a murder all the way down in Aragansett County.

She felt good. It was Saturday and sunny and she had forty-eighthours before she had to be back in school.


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“I was reading that,” her mom said quickly, moving to stop

her.

It was too late. Several real estate brochures slipped out frombetween the folds of the paper. Each of them featured nearly

identical pictures of happy-ever-after-type families: Greenville,

North Carolina. Tullahoma, Tennessee. St. Paul, Minnesota.

Dea’s whole body went cold. “What is this?” Dea pushed

back from the table, as if the brochures might come alive and

bite her. “What are these?”Dea’s mother was stirring her coffee. She didn’t look up.

“There’s no need to shout, Dea,” she said. “I’m just looking.”

“You said no more moving.” Dea’s stomach rolled into her

throat. The blond-haired teenage boy on the cover of St. Paul,

Minnesota, smirked at her.

“You don’t even like it here,” her mom said.

“I won’t like it there, either,” Dea said. It was the same every-

where; she knew that by now. New kids, same old rumors. At

least here she had Gollum. Weirdly, the new boy’s face flashed

in her mind—the way it had transformed when he smiled. “I

mean, come on. Minnesota?”

“I said, I’m just looking.” Finally, Dea’s mom looked up. Her

eyes were signaling a warning. But Dea didn’t care.

“You promised,” she said. She stood up, feeling shaky. “You

absolutely swore—”

“Things change.” Miriam cut Dea off, slamming her coffee cup

down on the counter, so a little liquid sloshed over the rim. They

stood in silence, glaring at each other. Then she sighed. “Listen,

Dea,” she said. “Nothing’s certain yet, okay? It’s all preliminary.”“I won’t do it,” Dea said. “You can’t make me.”


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“Of course I can,” Miriam said, frowning a little. “There are

things you don’t understand, Dea. Things much too complicated

for you to—” There was a sharp knock on the front door. Miriam jumped;

Dea, too. Toby began to yowl. No one ever came to the front

door, except for the Domino’s guy and sometimes a Jesus freak

pushing repentance and offering to sell a bible for $3.99. Gollum

and Dea met every morning at the gate, and said good-bye every

afternoon there too.“Who is that?” Miriam looked almost afraid. She quickly

shuffled the brochures back under the newspaper, as if they

were evidence of a crime. Which, to Dea, they were. “You’re not

expecting anyone, are you?”

Dea didn’t bother to answer. She was still furious.

Toby followed her down the hall. She pinned him against

the wall with a foot so he wouldn’t run out, and then unlocked

all three locks. She hadn’t bothered to look out the window. She

knew it would be a Bible thumper.

But it was Connor.

“Hi.” He lifted a hand and waved, even though they were

standing only about a foot away from each other.

Dea was so shocked that for a moment, she nearly said go

away, which is what she would have said to a Bible guy. Toby

wiggled away from her and darted out onto the porch. Connor

bent down and grabbed hold of him.

“Not so fast, little guy,” he said.

“Thanks,” Dea said, when Connor passed Toby back, holding

him delicately, as if Toby might shatter. When she turned aroundto place him back in the house, she saw a quick movement down


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the hall: her mother, retreating into the kitchen. Dea stepped

out onto the porch, closing the door, so her mother couldn’t

stand there and gape—so Connor wouldn’t accidentally geta view of a dozen clocks and the faded silhouettes of mirrors

removed from the wall, too.

“What do you want?” she said, which sounded rude, but it

was too late to take it back.

“Happy Saturday to you, too,” Connor said, but nicely, as a

joke. Dea thought he was expecting her to say something butdidn’t know what. “Um . . . can I come in?”

“No,” she said. She wished suddenly she’d paid more atten-

tion to her outfit. She was wearing flip-flops, ragged cut-off

shorts that revealed the paleness of her legs and the smattering

of freckles on her thighs, and a faded blue T-shirt with a Mr.

Clean logo stretching directly across her boobs. She hadn’t even

brushed her teeth. “So what’s up?” She crossed her arms and

tried not to breathe too hard.

Connor smiled wide. She wondered whether his smile was

like a negotiation technique, to get people to say yes to him. She

wondered whether it worked with other girls. “I thought you

might want to hang out,” he said easily. “Give me a tour. Show

me the Fielding sights.”

“Trust me,” she said. “There’s nothing to see.”

He shrugged. “I thought you might want to hang out any-

way.”

For a split second, Dea felt as if she must still be walking

a dream. Boys like Connor—good-looking, sporty, prom-court

kind of boys—weren’t nice to girls like Dea. It was a funda-mental rule of nature, the same way that panthers didn’t get


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chummy with groundhogs unless they were hunting for their

next meal. Any second Connor’s face would fracture and he’d

turn into her math teacher. Or the scene would dissolve, and thefront porch would turn into a rolling ocean, and Connor would

disappear entirely.

But no. Connor was still there, on her porch, looking extra

boy: old jeans and worn black Chucks and a band T-shirt, his

hair a little messy, his smile a little crooked, definitely the cutest

boy who had ever spoken to her or stood close enough that shecould smell the fact that he was chewing gum.

“I don’t know anyone else,” he said, almost apologetically.

“What about your cousin?” she said.

He made a face. “I hate that guy. Always have. Do you know

when we were kids he used to amputate frogs’ legs for fun?”

“That’s sick,” Dea said, although she wasn’t surprised. Last

year, Will Briggs had shoved Carl Gormely into a gym locker

and left him there for a whole day. The janitor finally let him out

when he was making rounds after school and heard banging.

“Tell me about it.” Connor was looking at her with an

expression she couldn’t decipher. “Come on. What do you say?”

She wondered, then, what kind of dreams he had. They were

probably sun-drenched and happy, full of pinwheeling flowers

and girls in bikinis and rivers of Coors Light. Normal dreams.

She half suspected this was some kind of trick. And she

knew, definitely knew, that it couldn’t last.

But maybe, just for a day, it wouldn’t hurt to pretend.

“I’ll get the keys,” she said.

Dea’s first real crush was on a guy named Brody Dawes, back in

Arizona. All the sixth-grade girls liked Brody. He was in eighth


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grade and had long sandy hair he was always sucking into his

mouth, especially during tests. He skateboarded to school every

day and carried around a dingy army-style backpack coveredwith patches for bands no one had ever heard of. When he

wasn’t sucking on his hair or a pen cap, he was picking at one of

the patches, looking bored. He always kept his backpack in his

lap, like he was ready to make a quick exit.

One day, Dea sat behind him at a schoolwide assembly. She

hadn’t planned it that way. She was sandwiched in the very backrow of the risers when he came and plopped down right in front

of her. His friends soon joined him and for forty-five minutes

she sat motionless, afraid to move or even breathe, afraid he

might turn around and tell her to leave. When he stood up, she

saw that one of his patches had fallen off his backpack: red and

black with the words Turkey Army embroidered on it. She pre-

tended to be tying her shoelaces and pocketed it.

Getting into his dream was easy. His mind barely put up

defenses at all—just a series of curtains, many of them torn,

fluttering as though in a breeze. Just beyond the line of flimsy

fabric was a patchy yard and a cheap, aboveground pool. It was

the kind of sunlight that exists only in dreams: it came from

every direction at once, so it felt like being on the wrong side of

a magnifying glass.

He was in the pool, not more than two feet away from Dea,

shirtless. She could have threaded her hand past the curtains

and touched his shoulders or run her fingers through his hair.

She could have climbed into the pool with him. She could have

leaned over and pressed her lips to his, like she’d seen MishtiBarns and Mark Spencer do every morning before homeroom.

She wanted to, desperately.


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But it was against the rules.

The water broke and Hillary Davis surfaced soundlessly,

looking even better than she did in real life. Her skin was goldenand her teeth were the white of bleached bone. Her hair shim-

mered in the sun and her boobs floated like overturned cups on

the water.

Then they were kissing. Dea stood there, not two feet away,

mesmerized. She could hear the suction sound of their lips and

the lapping of their tongues and the whisper of his fingers onher back and shoulders. She stayed there until the curtains

became iron walls and she knew Brody was waking up. She had

just enough time to slip out of the dream before she felt a sud-

den, jolting pressure in her chest and she was back in her room,

in her body, touching her lips with one cold hand.

Still, to this day, Dea had never been kissed.


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The Donahue house was a good seven miles outside the com-

mercial center of Fielding. On the way toward town, Dea spotted

Gollum riding her ancient Schwinn. Dea jerked the car off the

road, sending Connor careening against the passenger-side win-

dow.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said. But he laughed.

“Sorry,” Dea said. Gollum spotted Dea’s car and came to a

stop by dragging her feet, kicking up a cloud of pale dust. She

didn’t get off her bike but stood up, straddling it, gripping the

handlebars.Gollum was dressed in her typical style: an assortment of


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clothes no doubt inherited from one of her older brothers, which

she’d tucked and pinned and rolled so that they would at least

somewhat fit. Her blond hair was pulled back, but a crown ofwisps had escaped from her ponytail, giving her the look of a

deranged angel. For the shortest second, Dea was embarrassed

by her and wished she hadn’t stopped. Then, furious with her-

self, she rolled down the window as Gollum looked up, her eyes

practically shooting out of her head.

“Connor,” she said. “This is my friend, Gollum.” She pro-nounced the word friend emphatically, still angry at herself for

her moment of mental treachery. “Gollum, this is Connor. He’s

the one who just moved in.”

Gollum stooped down to peer past Dea. Her mouth opened,

and then closed. Dea had never seen Gollum speechless before.

Luckily, Connor took the lead. He leaned over the center

console, his shoulder bumping Dea’s. “Gollum,” he said. “Cool

name.”

“Thanks,” she said, still staring at him. “Cool . . . face.”

Connor burst out laughing. Gollum turned roughly the color

of beet juice.

“Sorry,” she said. “My mouth isn’t always hooked up to my

brain.”

Dea reached out and squeezed Gollum’s hand. She was filled

with a sudden sense of warmth. She was driving in the car with

a boy who had a cool face, and her friend—they were friends,

even if they didn’t really hang out outside of school—was stand-

ing there, blushing, and the whole scene felt like it could have

been lifted straight out of any teen movie.Which made her, Dea, the star.


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“That’s okay,” Connor said. “Neither is mine.”

Once again, Dea had a momentary suspicion that Connor

must be tricking them. Or maybe he was secretly a freak. Maybehe was hiding a third and fourth nipple, or a secret Star Wars

addiction.

“Want a ride somewhere?” Dea asked. “You can throw your

bike in the back.”

Gollum made a face. “I gotta go home. Besides, the Beast

would never fit.” She patted the handlebars.“I’m getting the grand tour of Fielding,” Connor said, still

smiling.

Gollum’s face had returned to its normal color. She shoved

her glasses up the bridge of her nose with a thumb. “Should

be the most mediocre five minutes of your life,” she said, and

thumped Dea’s door. “Have fun. Don’t forget to swing by the

dump. It’s one of Fielding’s most scenic attractions.” When

Connor wasn’t looking, she mouthed, Oh my God and did the

bug-eyed thing again.

Now Dea was the one blushing.

Gollum wasn’t exaggerating: It took approximately four

minutes to get from one end of Fielding to the other. The com-

mercial district was just two intersecting roads and a heap of

buildings in various stages of decay. On Main Street there were

two gas stations, a church, a liquor store, a hair salon, a fried

chicken spot, a mini-mart, and a mega-mart. On Center Street

was a diner, a pharmacy (now shuttered), a 7-Eleven, another

liquor store, and Mack’s, the only bar in town, which everyone

always referred to by its full name, Mack’s Center Street, asif there were another somewhere else. Two miles past Center


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Street, after a quick patchwork of fields and farms and houses

that were falling slowly into the dirt, was the Fielding School,

serving grades kindergarten to dropout. They didn’t even have a Walmart. For that, you had to drive

all the way to Bloomington.

“Voilà ,” she said to Connor when they reached the Fielding

School. The parking lot was mostly empty. In the distance, she

spotted a bunch of guys from the football team running drills.

“Tour complete. What do you think?”“I think the mega-mart was my favorite,” Connor said. “But

the mini-mart’s a close second.” One thing that was nice about

Connor: he didn’t fidget. He was way too tall for Dea’s mom’s

car, another simulacrum: an exact replica of the original VW

Beetle, with its engine in the back and everything. Even though

Connor was squished in the front seat, knees practically to his

chest, he looked perfectly relaxed. He didn’t even press Dea

about the fact that the rearview mirror was blacked out with

masking tape, even though she’d had an excuse ready: the glass

had shattered and they were waiting on parts to replace it.

“I told you there was nothing to see,” Dea said.

“Depends on your perspective,” Connor said, looking at her

in a way that made her suddenly nervous. She put the car in

drive again, and rumbled slowly out of the parking lot. Plumes

of red dust came up from the tires. The sun was so bright, it was

hard to see. She was glad, at least, that the air conditioner was

the modern kind.

“So. Anything I should know about F.S.? Trade secrets?

Words of warning?” he asked.“All schools are pretty much the same,” Dea said. “Don’t


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backtalk the teacher. Don’t touch the hot lunch. Try to stay

awake during history.”

He laughed. He had a great laugh—just like his smile, itmade him about a thousand times more attractive. “You been to

a lot of schools?”

“Half a dozen.” Actually, she’d been enrolled at ten differ-

ent schools, and lived in twelve different states. But no point in

launching into a monologue about it. “My mom likes to move

around,” she added, when he made a face. “How about you?”He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “My dad got laid

off,” he said. “My uncle—that’s Will’s dad—is a cop down here.

He hooked him up with a landscaping job. Dad was a teacher

before. My stepmom has some family nearby.”

So the woman she’d seen unpacking was his stepmom. Dea

waited for him to mention his real mom but he didn’t, so she

didn’t press.

He was quiet for a minute and Dea started to panic. She

couldn’t think of anything to say. Then he blurted out, “It’s too

open here. Too much sky.” Almost immediately, he laughed

again. “I guess I’m used to the city.”

She knew exactly what he meant—the sky was like a big

mouth, hanging open, ready to swallow you whole. But she just

said, “Where’d you move from?”

“Chicago,” he said.

“I lived in Chicago for a while,” she said. “Lincoln Park.”

He turned to look out the window. “That’s where we lived,”

he said. Then, “Where to now?”

She got a flush of pleasure. Don’t trust it, a voice, her logicalvoice, piped up quickly. You know you’ll only be disappointed.


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Maybe not, another voice said stubbornly. Maybe he’s got those

four nipples after all.

It was so absurd: she was actually hoping that the boy nextto her had extra nipples.

“We could go to Cincinnati,” she said. “It’s only two hours.”

She was joking, of course. But Connor’s reflection, overlaid

across a plain of brown and gray, smiled. “Drive on,” he said.

Dea found it easy—almost too easy—to open up to Connor.In less than an hour, she’d told Connor more than she’d told

anyone in years—way more than she’d ever told Gollum. They

shared likes and dislikes, words neither of them could stand to

hear, like cream and moisture. They’d hopscotched from Dea’s

love of old junk to her hatred of bananas to the months she’d

spent living next to a military base in Georgia. Her mom had a

boyfriend then, the only boyfriend she remembered.

“So it’s just you and your mom, then?” Connor asked. She

appreciated that he didn’t just straight-up ask her about her dad.

Not that she would have anything to say, except he looks good in

a red polo shirt.

She nodded. “What about you?” she said. “No siblings?”

A muscle twitched in Connor’s jaw. “No. Used to, though.”

His fingers drummed against the dashboard, the first time he

had shown any sign of discomfort. Dea tried to think of some-

thing to say, words of comfort or a question about what had

happened, but then he was smiling again and the moment, the

impression of past pain, was gone. “You really hate bananas?”

Dea felt vaguely disappointed, as if she’d missed an opportu-nity. “Despise them,” she said.


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“Even banana bread?”

“Even worse.” She made a face. “Why ruin bread by putting

banana in it? It’s like a banana sneak attack. I like them out inthe open, where I can see them.”

He laughed and chucked her chin. “You’re a piece of work,

Donahue.” But the way he said it made it sound like a compli-

ment.

Connor plugged in his iPhone and played her some of his

favorite songs—stuff by Coldplay and the Smiths, plus a bunchof songs from bands she’d never heard of—but he never stopped

talking over the music. He didn’t like the color red (“too obvi-

ous”), or raw onions (“it’s texture, not taste”), or highways.

“They look the same everywhere,” he said. “Back roads are way

more interesting. They have flavor. Except,” he quickly added,

“for this beautiful highway, of course.”

He gestured out the window; they were passing an industrial

farm. Dea knew only one way of driving to Cincinnati, on IN-46.

The view had been the same since they’d left Fielding. The three

F s: farms, flatlands, firearm ranges.

Connor had been a swimmer in Chicago and was “decent—

good for state, not good enough to go national.” He hated

football and mozzarella cheese (“it’s like weird alien skin”). He

believed in ghosts—really believed. Scientifically.

“Are you serious?” Dea couldn’t help but say.

He spread his hands wide. “There are more things on heaven

and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” She was

impressed that he’d memorized a Shakespeare quote, and didn’t

want to tell him she disagreed. There were plenty of things thatwere dreamed about, more things than you’d believe.


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He’d been a vegetarian for four years, which was weird,

because he didn’t seem like one. When she asked him about it,

he shrugged and said, “I really like dogs.”“We don’t eat dogs,” she pointed out.

“Exactly,” he said cryptically. “Anyway, I’m not vegetar-

ian anymore. One day I went crazy at a steak buffet. It wasn’t

pretty.” He had to rearrange his whole body to turn and look at

her. He reminded her of a puppet whose strings aren’t working

all together. “What about you?”“I’m not vegetarian,” she said.

“No.” He laughed. “I meant what about you? Weird quirks?

Dark secrets?”

For a split second, she thought of confessing: I walk other

people’s dreams. I get sick if I don’t. Mom is afraid of things I don’t

understand. That’s why three locks. That’s why no mirrors. She’s prob-

ably nuts, and I might be nuts like her.

“I don’t have any,” she said.

Something flickered behind his eyes—an expression gone

too soon for her to name. “Everyone has dark secrets,” he said.

They went on a hunt for billboards. The weirder the sign,

the better. She got three points for spotting LAVENDER’S: INDI-

ANA’S LARGEST EMPORIUM FOR XXX TOYS, VIDEOS, AND

POSTERS. Connor got a point for THE FIREWORKS FACTORY

and two points for a faded billboard featuring an enormous

Jesus on the cross and the words: MEET JESUS FACE-TO-FACE!

In smaller letters: RESULTS NOT GUARANTEED.

They’d crossed over the Ohio border when Connor shouted.

Dea nearly drove off the road.“Pull over, pull over!” he said , so she did, barely making the


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exit. A big billboard, faded from the weather, was staked into

the dirt: OHIO’S LARGEST CORN MAZE. In the distance, she

saw it: golden walls of corn, stretching toward the horizon.“Really?” she said.

He was still gazing at the sign, enraptured. “It’s the larg-

est, Dea. We have to.” He turned to her and put a hand on her

thigh just for a second. Her heart went still. But then his hand

was gone, and her heart started hammering again, even though

she’d walked a dream the night before. The last time Dea had been in a maze of any kind was in

Florida. That one was made of walls; it was part of an amuse-

ment park called Funville, which was only thirty miles from

Disney World but smaller and older and cheaper, the dollar

store equivalent of the amusement park industry. Dea’s mom

hated crowds but she loved mazes because they reminded her of

dreams: that same twisty kind of logic, the same sense of being

suspended in time, moving forward without moving forward

at all. She especially loved the maze at Funville, which was all

white, made from cheap plastic studded with glitter so it looked

kind of like snow, especially if you lived in Florida and didn’t see

snow very often. In Dea’s memory, the white walls were the size

of skyscrapers.

Dea and Connor climbed out of the car. Dea had been expect-

ing a crowd but there was no one around—no parents and kids

rushing in and out of the maze. The ticket booth was padlocked

and marked with a sign that said CLOSED. There was just a

bleached fence and a gap in the corn where the maze began, and

the high white sun staring down impassively. At least it was cooler inside the maze. The ground was dark


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with shadows. Connor suggested they race to the center. Dea

quickly agreed. She didn’t know if it was the heat or the maze

or Connor, but she was feeling a little dizzy, almost drunk, likethe time at Christmas in Houston when her mom made eggnog

with too much rum and let her have a full cup, and they ended

up outside in their bikinis, tanning until the sun went down,

and she woke up with a headache and a slick tongue and a bad

sunburn.

“On your mark, get set, go!” he shouted. After a single turn, she’d lost sight of him. Two more turns

and she couldn’t hear anything but the occasional gust of wind

through the dry corn. Another two turns and she hit a dead end.

She backtracked quickly. Her heart was going hard, skipping a

beat here and there, then trying to compensate, spilling together

into a constant thrum. It was too quiet. Even the clouds had

stopped moving.

She was seized by irrational fear: what if, somehow, this was

all still a part of Shawna McGregor’s dream? What if she had

never woken up? What if the conversation with her mom and

seeing Connor and all of it was just a subplot, a random spool

unraveling in Shawna’s brain? Maybe this was the part where

Connor disappeared and instead she found herself alone in a

maze with Morgan Devoe or Keith, the bus driver. Or maybe

no one would come. Maybe the sky would start melting and the

corn would fall down around her like a series of dominoes.

She knew it was stupid, but she couldn’t shake the idea.

It was so bright. She started running. She hit another dead

end. Not a whisper of breeze. She forced herself not to call outConnor’s name. If it was a dream, it would end eventually. All

dreams ended.


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She didn’t want it to be a dream, though.

She turned a corner and ran straight into Connor. Same

T-shirt, same smile, same hair falling over his eyes. Not a dream,then. She nearly grabbed him to check.

“I found you,” he said.

“I found you,” she corrected him. “I guess we tie.” She real-

ized they’d made it to the very center of the maze. The sun was

almost directly above them.

If Connor noticed how hard she was breathing, he was toonice to mention it.

“If I ever needed a place to hide out, I’d come here,” he said,

as they wound their way back to the parking lot.

She raised an eyebrow—or tried to. Gollum was teaching

her but she hadn’t mastered it yet. “Are you planning to go on

the run?”

“Think about it! A maze is even better than a moat. It’s like

a built-in security system. No one would ever find you.”

“Except for the tourists,” Dea said.

Connor grinned. “Yeah. Except for the tourists.”

A few miles away from the corn maze, Dea spotted another

billboard, this one just after a sign pointing the way to DeWitt:

THE RAILROAD DINER: WORLD-FAMOUS MILKSH AKES.

“You hungry?” Connor asked.

“I don’t have to be hungry for milkshakes,” she said. “That’s

like asking if I feel like breathing.”

They pulled over and got milkshakes (vanilla for him, straw-

berry for her). The diner looked like it had come straight out of

a billion years ago. There was even an old cash register madeof brass. The waitress, Carol, who seemed just as ancient as

her surroundings, warmed to Connor right away and even let


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him open the drawer and press a couple of the buttons when

he asked. Dea realized that Connor was that kind of person. He

could get away with anything. He belonged.He made her feel like she belonged, too.

Next up was a fifteen-mile detour to Ohio’s largest rubber

ball.

“We’re never gonna get to Cincinnati, you know,” Dea said.

“It’s the journey, not the destination,” Connor said, making

a fake guidance-counselor face. “And come on! Indiana’s larg-est rubber ball.” He tapped her thigh with every syllable. “How

could we punk out on that?”

By the time Connor had finished snapping pictures at the

Biggest Rubber Ball in Ohio—which, true to its name, was enor-

mous—the sun had rolled off the center of the sky and the fields

were striped with purple shadows. As they headed back to the

car, a dusty minivan pulled into the parking lot and a family

poured out: mom dad kid kid kid, all of them wearing some

combination of visor and shorts and flip-flops. Dea imagined,

briefly, what she and Connor must look like to them. They prob-

ably thought Connor was her boyfriend.

It was after three, and Dea knew they should turn around.

But she didn’t want to. She felt fizzy with happiness, like some-

one had uncorked a giant bottle of soda inside of her. For once,

she was glad she didn’t have a real cell phone, except for the

crappy pay-as-you-go one she’d bought one winter with the sav-

ings she pocketed from scraping off people’s windshields. Her

mom didn’t even know about it, which meant that she couldn’t

call Dea and bug her to get home.Miriam owned nothing: no cell phone, no property, no

bank account even. She kept all their money in bricks of cash,


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elastic-banded together, concealed in shoeboxes in her closet,

stashed in the passenger seat of the car, camouflaged in a tam-

pon box beneath the bathroom sink. (That was the emergencyfund: when even the tampon box was empty, Dea knew, it was

time to move.) The money came in spurts, like blood from a new

wound, and Dea didn’t ask where she got all of it, like she didn’t

ask why Miriam was so afraid and who Miriam thought they

were running from.

“We’re like wind,” Miriam always used to say, running herfingers through Dea’s hair. “Poof! We vanish. We disappear.”

It had never occurred to her that someday Dea might grow

up and wish instead to be visible. That she might want a cell

phone and friends to call, apps and pictures and customiz-

able ringtones. That was why Dea had bought the phone, even

though it was plastic and cheap and she hated to bring it out in

public and half the time she forgot to charge it: she wanted to

feel like everybody else.

But for once, Dea wanted to do exactly what her mom always

talked about: vanish. If no one knew where she was, maybe she

wouldn’t have to go back.

“Where to next?” she said. Don’t say home, she tried to tele-

graph in his direction. Anywhere but home.

Connor’s eyes clicked to the dashboard clock. “I bet we can

still make it to Cincinnati and back before dark.”

She put the car in gear. Her cheeks ached from smiling.

When they reached the outskirts of the city, Dea turned

off the highway and onto local roads with no clear sense of

where they were going. Houses clumped together, like waterbeading into a narrow stream: a blur of dingy white Cape Cods

and low-rent trailers and patchy yards and garages fitted with


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old basketball nets. Connor spotted another sign, this one

handmade on poster board, propped against a telephone pole:

RUMMAGE SALE!! 249 WARREN, RIGHT ON ROUTE 9. SPORT-

ING EQUIPMENT GOLF CHINA TOYS KITCHEN TOASTERS.

“Let’s stop,” Connor said. “Maybe I’ll find an old toaster.”

“You want a toaster?” she said.

Connor leaned over.

“Listen to me, Dea,” he said solemnly, like he was about to

recite a pledge. “You can never, ever, have too many toasters.”She laughed. “Freak,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, still smiling, touching his fingers to

an imaginary hat.

A dozen folding tables, the kind found in school cafeterias

and at cheap weddings, were set out on the lawn in front of 249

Warren. Behind one of them, a girl a few years younger than

Dea sat slumped in a lawn chair, punching her iPhone with a

finger. Two barefoot kids made circles around the lawn, shriek-

ing, smacking around a Wiffle ball. An overweight woman,

sweating through her dark T-shirt, was manning a cash box

and periodically yelling at them to stop. A dozen people, mostly

women, were picking through plastic bins filled with old lamps

and lunchboxes, picture frames and plastic toys, with the same

attentiveness of children searching the beach for the best sea-

shells.

“Jackpot,” Connor said, gesturing toward one of the tables,

where two rusted toasters were wedged next to an old micro-

wave and a grimy coffee pot.

Dea felt a quick lift of happiness, like the soft rise of a moth’swings in her stomach.


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She loved rummage sales—the strangeness of things

grouped together that didn’t make sense: children’s clothes next

to old smutty paperbacks next to kitchen equipment next tolawn mowers, like a long and glorious sentence full of mixed

metaphors. She’d always liked to imagine belonging to a fam-

ily that dug through its closets and basement and garage once

a year, and carted up all the broken and stained and useless

things, expelled them like a disease. Dad would complain about

giving up his golf clubs; Mom would point out he never played.Little sister and brother would refuse to give up a beloved

toy, even though it had long been retired to the bottom of a

mothball-smelling trunk, underneath the winter sweaters.

If Dea and her mom had a rummage sale, practically every-

thing they owned would fit in a single bin.

Connor pretended to be fascinated by the toasters, hamming

it up to make Dea laugh and asking the heavy woman—who had

succeeded in wrestling away the Wiffle ball from her younger

children, and was trying to compel them to go wash up for din-

ner—questions about whether the toasters could be counted on

to make toast crusty or just crunchy.

“Both. Neither. Whatever you want,” she said, pushing her

hair from her eyes with a wrist.

Dea picked a bin at random and began flipping through it,

sifting through the kind of miscellany that accumulated at the

bottom of kitchen junk drawers: coins, scissors, unopened cans

of rubber cement. She found a knitted potholder shaped like a

hen, soft and often handled, and she wondered briefly whether

she should pocket it, use it as a door to get into the fat woman’sdreams. But in the end she dropped it and moved on.


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The next bin was full of random housewares: old whisks and

lightly stained tablecloths, bronze candlesticks and a snow globe

featuring a figurine of a topless girl in a grass skirt, who wig-gled her hips as the snow came down. Hawaiian vacation, she

decided, or maybe Florida. The mom had always hated it, and

had finally convinced the dad to trash it, or had done it behind

his back. She’s topless, Don. What message are we sending the kids?

She shoved aside a tablecloth and froze. All of a sudden, she

felt like she did in those floundering moments of dark and coldwhen she was fighting her way into someone’s dream—as if she

were falling, weightless, into nothing. For several long seconds,

her heart didn’t beat at all.

Two identical cheap laminate picture frames were stacked

together at the bottom of the bin. Her father’s smile beamed up

at her from both of them, his teeth dentist-white above his red

polo shirt. His dog was turned partly away from the camera,

looking almost apologetic.

An advertisement. A stock photo used to sell cheap plastic

frames. Man Posing with German Shepherd. How had she never

seen it before?

The world came back in a blast of noise and heat. She could

smell the bubble gum the girl with the iPhone was chewing,

the booze-breath of the man rifling through an assortment of

cutlery next to her, charcoal smoke on the air, sweat. She was

going to be sick.

What had Miriam said when Dea had asked her what Dad’s

dog was named?

I don’t remember. Then: Daisy, I think.She thought of the other things her mother had told her


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over the years, vague references to her father’s importance, to

his severity, to his sense of duty. Nothing specific—but ideas,

suggestions that Dea had clung to for years, trying to wringmeaning from them.

Lies. All lies.

“Find anything good?” Connor was behind her. She dropped

the photos quickly, and shoved the tablecloth on top of them, as

if they needed to be smothered.

“No,” she said. Little spots of color flickered in the edges ofher vision. Her heart had lost its rhythm entirely. “I need to go.”

Connor’s face got worried. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” She couldn’t stand to look at him. She started

speed-walking toward the car. “I just have to get home, that’s

all.”

Connor caught up to her quickly. His legs were much longer

than hers. For a moment, he was quiet. “Did something hap-

pen?”

“I told you, no.” More seconds when her heart cut out totally,

like a song interrupted by a power outage. Then a sudden flare

and it was pounding high in her throat.

“Because you seemed happy, and then all of a sudden—”

“You don’t know me,” she said. She knew she was acting like

a crazy person, but she didn’t care. She was a crazy person. It

was genetic, inherited. All lies. He might as well know it. “You

don’t know whether I’m happy or not.”

That made him shut up. They drove back to Fielding, all one

hundred and thirty-two miles, in silence.


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The light was long gone by the time Dea reached Connor’s house.

Through the windows, she could see his dad and stepmom moving

around the dining room table, clearing away boxes, occasionally

stopping for a kiss. There was a tight belt of fury across her chest.

“Listen.” Connor spoke for the first time since they left the

yard sale. “If I did something to, I don’t know, piss you off—”

“You didn’t.” She willed him out of the car, sick with jeal-

ousy, sick with guilt. It wasn’t his fault. Obviously, it wasn’t.

“All right.” Connor sounded tired, or maybe disgusted. He

got out of the car without another word— see you later or thatwas fun or thanks for the tour—and at the last second she had to


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force herself not to call out after him.

She jerked the car into her driveway, climbed out, and

slammed the door so hard it rattled. Good. She hoped the wholepiece of shit fell apart. An illusion on top of an illusion.

It took her a few tries to get the key into the first lock. Her

fingers were shaking, her heart still doing its jerky dance in her

chest: she pictured valves opening and shutting desperately like

the mouth of a dying fish. She slammed the front door, too.

“Dea? Is that you?” her mom called out, as if it could beanyone else.

Thick as thieves, Miriam always said , putting her face right up

to Dea’s, nose to nose—practically mirror images.

She’d been lying forever.

“I didn’t think you’d be out so late. Did you remember to

lock the door?” Miriam was sitting in the rented living room,

on a rented leather sofa, listening to music on the crappy rented

stereo. She straightened up when she saw Dea’s face. Her mug of

tea had left rings on the rented coffee table. They might as well

just be renting space on this planet. “Dea? Is everything okay?”

The photograph of the man who was supposed to be Dea’s

father was sitting on the mantel above the defunct fireplace.

Every time Dea and her mom moved, Miriam made a big show

of swaddling the photograph, safe, at the bottom of her suitcase.

So it won’t break, she always said. And then, when they got to

their new place, still smelling of paint and plaster or maybe of

the old tenant, like cat urine and burnt coffee, she removed it

carefully again, untucking it like a baby from a diaper. Do you

want to find a place to put Dad, Dea?Dea was across the room before she knew she was moving.


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She grabbed the picture from the mantel.

“Dea?” her mom repeated. Then, more sharply, when she

saw what was in her hands: “Dea.”“Tell me about this photo, Mom,” Dea said, struggling to

keep her voice steady.

Miriam’s eyes went wary, watchful, like the eyes of a wild

animal when you get too close. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want to know the story. Where were you?”

“Oh.” Her mother pronounced the word exactly. Oh. If shewere smoking, a perfect ring would be on its way to the ceiling.

“It was a long time ago.”

“What were you wearing?” she said. “Whose idea was it to

pose?”

Miriam’s hand f luttered to her hair, then returned to her lap.

“It was your father’s idea, I think. Really, I can’t remember. . . .”

“Why this picture, and only this picture?” White spots were

eating the edges of her vision and her heart was stopping for

whole blank seconds, stretches of silence when her body hung,

suspended, between alive and not. One time when Dea hadn’t

walked a dream for a month she felt just like this; she collapsed

in the bus as she stood up to get off at her stop. She was hospi-

talized for two days and got better only after she stole a nurse’s

crucifix and pushed into a dream, hot and disorganized, of hos-

pital rooms and babies crying behind every door.

“Your father didn’t like photographs,” her mother said.

There was an edge to her voice now. “I don’t understand the

point of all these questions.”

“The point, Mom, is that you’re a liar.” The words came outin a quick rush and left Dea feeling queasy—like throwing up


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when you really didn’t want to. “This isn’t my dad. This isn’t

anyone. This is some random picture of some cheesy model you

found in some cheesy discount store.”For a second Miriam stared—white-faced, almost sullen.

Then she cleared her throat and folded her hands on her lap,

one on top of the other.

“All right,” she said calmly. That was the worst: how calm

she was. Dea desperately wished her mother would yell. Then

she could yell too, do something with the anger that was claw-ing its way into her throat. “You got me.”

Just those three words. You got me.

Before Dea could regret it, she hurled the photograph across

the room. Her mom screamed. The glass shattered. The frame

thudded to the ground.

“God, Dea.” Now her mom was shouting. “Jesus. You nearly

gave me a heart attack.”

“You. Lied. To. Me.” Dea could barely get the words out.

“I had to.” Miriam sounded impatient, as if Dea was the one

being unreasonable. “There are things you don’t understand,

Dea. I’ve told you over and over. . . . There are things you’ll never

understand. . . .” She turned away. “And it wasn’t all a lie. Not all

of it. Your father was—is—a very powerful man.”

Dea ignored that part. More lies, probably, to make her feel

better. “Oh yeah?” She crossed her mind. “So who is he? Some

big shot lawyer? Some random guy you screwed?”

“Odea Donahue.” Her mom’s voice got very quiet. Dea knew

she had gone too far, but she couldn’t stop.

“I don’t even know my real last name. Maybe Brody Daweswas right about you,” she blurted out. “Maybe all those people


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in Arizona were right.”

Her mom flinched, as if Dea had reached out and slapped

her. But it was too late to take the words back so Dea just stoodthere, breathing hard, fighting the desperate open-shut feeling

in her chest, pressing down the guilt.

Her crush on Brody Dawes had ended when, halfway through

sixth grade, she was shocked to hear Brody say her name. For a

second, she nearly fainted from joy. Then she realized what he

was saying. Donahue’s mom’s a whore. She gives it out in the park-ing lot of the Quick-E-Lube. No one could figure out how Dea’s

mom was making her money that year—she’d been laid off at

the insurance office—and the rumor had spread quickly. It was

a small town.

Miriam opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her whole

face was like a scar: pinched and white. “Go to your room,” she

said, forcing the words out. Dea was grateful for the excuse. She

couldn’t stand to look at her mom anymore.

Upstairs, Dea tried once again to slam the door, to make a

big statement, but the house was old and its joints swollen and

instead she had to lean into the door just to get it to close. Toby

looked up, blinking, from his position right in the middle of her

pillow.

She lay down on the bed and let herself cry, feeling sorry for

herself about everything, even the fact that Toby didn’t move or

lick her face, and instead just sat there purring like a motor on

her pillow.

Practically, she knew it changed nothing. She’d never had a

dad. But at least she’d been able to pretend. She had studied hisimage and cut-and-pasted it into memories so he was there, in


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the background, watching her tootle along on her three-wheeler

in a cul-de-sac in Georgia; beaming from the front row when

she won a spelling bee in second grade in Virginia; nodding withapproval while she flew down a soccer field in New Jersey, the

one and only time she had been stupid enough to join a sports

team. She’d been Photoshopping her past, tweaking it, aligning

it just a little more closely with normalcy.

Why would her mom lie—why would her mom spend years

book excerpt: dreamland by robert l. anderson

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